Digital Recorder Unorganizes Your Music

I own a top-quality multiple-channel digital audio recorder -- a Tascam 2488 Neo -- for my part-time hobby and business. Prior to purchasing last year, I made sure that the recorder had a USB port so I could move songs (.wav files) to and from my PC.

The recorder allows me to assign each song a unique name and save it, by name, on the recorder hard drive. The recorder drive has several partitions where songs are saved, but only the FAT (file allocation table) partition can be accessed through the USB port.

The problem is that the songs (.wav files) on the FAT partition are not the actual song names but default names created by the recorder, such as "SONG001.WAV, SONG002.WAV, etc." Also, the songs on the FAT partition all have the same date: 8-22-2008. Therefore, when viewing the recorder files from my PC, there is no way to tell the actual song name or the date the song was created. When dealing with multiple files, this is a hassle.

Worse yet, if I delete file SONG003.wav from the sequence SONG001.wav to SONG007.wav, the next song saved will be named SONG003.wav even though it was created after SONG007.wav.

The recorder manufacturer says this is normal, as 8-22-08 is the default date for Windows 7. And the file renaming "is just the way it is."

This is a really high-performance, state-of-the are digital recorder. You would think the designers could have, at the least, put a unique date on each of the .wav files.

This entry was submitted by Tom Spink and edited by Rob Spiegel.

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Tom, it sounds like they need some more sophisticated software engineers.If they are going to use FAT devices, they need to have some sort of database of the songs.It seems like they are relying on the file names alone.They could do so much more.

That would be incredibly frustrating. For a high end product it sounds to me like the USB capability was added as an afterthought to the design - they focused on doing well for the recorder part and then someone said - hey, we better come up with a way to transfer the files through a USB port since so many people are doing that now...

First, I wouldn't call the Neo a "high end" digital recorder, I'd call it a pro-sumer grade swiss army knife device, so I sort of get your frustration...but nevermind that - the "only generic" file naming issue upon imports is fairly common to all truly professional platforms. None of the big three concern themselves with friendly name management of end-user naming conventions for importing files - (Avid / Nuendo / Steinberg). All three provide robust file naming tools for newly created content. It may sound counterintuitive to non-professionals and hobbyists, but this is in line with Avid (and others') philosophy that they are about creating new content, not ripping copyrighted materials from consumer CD and MP3 files.

Yes, I work in audio - over 35 years - yes, I do this full time for a living, and yes I work on one of the above platforms for almost two decades.

You might look at Audacity, if you want such robust file naming transfers - Audacity is quite good at that, if memory serves me - and it is free. Audacity is a great piece of collaborative freeware.

I agree with naperlou. They could have done a much better job, well they could have at least done something! It doesn't seem like they even gave it a thought. I would be like you and have expected at least something....something better than that. Just the simple correct dating of the song would be enough...how hard could that possibly be!?

I agree, Cadman-LT. Since one of the accepted uses of the device is moving songs to and from a PC, the manufacurer should have been more prepared. Unfortunately, it's all too easy to release a product and let the customer deal with the problem after it's purchased.

The "high-end" comment is definately subjective. As an amateur with a hobby budget I found the Tacam has everthing I needed for under $1K. I recorded a 20Hz to 20Kz sine thru a Zoom and the Tascam and found terrible distortion on playback from the Zoom, especially above 8KHz.

Once I've made my .wav files and transferred them to my PC, I use Wavepad by NCH Software for editing files - separating them into audio tracks, setting amplitude, Etc. Wavepad is free and it looks similar to Audacity. I used Audacity in the past but I thought I heard some type of distortion in the playback. I switched to Wavepad and the sound seems clean to me.

I've seen the same problem on a few of the recorders, including the Zoom. It seems that you get plenty of features on the recorder, but the interface to the memory cards is a little primitive. Of course, if they added file naming you need to be able to type in the name, edit the name, check for illegal file names, check for duplicates. It would take a fair amount of code to add the feature.

This is what happens when software is developed by programmers. That is probably the way that they organize their records at home, as well.One option might be to copy each file to a better name in another directory. Of course, that would take up lots of space, so an alternate mathod would be to save them by name on a backup disk.

That seems to be the norm anymore. Do as little as possible and let the end user figure it out. There used to be a day when people made a quality product and were proud to do it. Read some of the monkey stuff, people are fixing their own equipment because the company won't spend a few cents on a washer...just an example..what is a quality product anymore...high dollar? not always arg!

I disagree. I am schooling to be a programmer and I would never let that fly. That isn't the programmers fault...and if it is...they have the wrong programmers. Programmers..I tend to think....like to make cool stuff...usability is a main part of that. So to blame the programmers.....nah. it's saving money...just make it work...who cares about the end user anymore?!

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